President Áder Hails Paris Agreement On Climate Change

Tamás Székely 2015.12.15.

Hungarian President János Áder welcomed achievements of the 21st UN climate conference held in Paris. Evaluating the summit, the president called it the greatest achievement that the global community managed to swerve from the road leading to natural disasters caused by climate change. All this, however, does not mean that we have achieved “the greatest good”, namely that we have managed to halt global warming, he said, adding that there was no realistic chance for such a breakthrough.

János Áder, one of the state leaders who delivered a speech in Paris, called the next five years an important period of time with many tasks to be fulfilled. One among these will be intensifying scientific research work, aimed at finding more efficient methods of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and harnessing solar and wind energy, as well as tackling the problem of storing energy, he said. Hungary could be an important player during the next five years by contributing its intellectual capital to research carried out elsewhere in the world. Implementing the Paris agreement is all the more important for the country as recent research suggests that the Carpathian Basin is more affected by climate change than several other European countries, he said.

Last Saturday representatives of 195 different nations struck a new landmark deal in order to battle climate change across the world. According to the document, they will attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will limit the global average temperature to a rise “well below” 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels – a level of warming deemed to be the point when dangerous climate change could threaten life on Earth. The state of Hungary offered to contribute 2 billion forints (USD 6M) for international climate management and the success of the Paris climate summit for the Green climate fund operating under a United Nations framework agreement.